Category: LookingOutwards-09

Looking through my peer’s Looking Outwards posts, one of Shan Wang’s posts on 3D computer graphics caught my eyes. I have heard about Alex Roman and the architectural rendering film of the Exeter Library by Louis Khan. After watching the video and reading Shan’s opinion, I agree with her that this computer generated project is full of great uses of lighting, shades and color. I also liked how she described him as an CG artists who has amazing aesthetic sensibility and techniques in rendering. In addition, I think Roman’s works are valuable because his mix uses of different software and the carefully interpreted details of nature. He added active human figures into his renderings, which made them more lively and vivid.

Computer Generated Graphic of Louis Khan’s library in Exeter 2009

Kinematic Dress / N-e-r-v-o-u-s System (2014)

source

Looking Outwards 03 by sajohnso

I was fascinated by the project of a 3D printed dress that is aimed to be flexible, and that would allow movement and would lay comfortably on the body, like other garments, rather than hard 3D printed wearable “sculptures” that were previously designed using 3D printed techniques.

I agree with the Looking Outwards post in that the most interesting aspect of this project is not in the dress itself,  but the sophisticated printing method – the dress was simulated being folded on a computer and was printed in a folded “chunk of a dress”. This allowed to print it in one piece, rather than hand assembly small parts.

I would like to extend on how this is important for the advancement of 3D printed garments. In my opinion, the ability to “fold” parts on the computer and only then print it allows easy home fabrication in one click. Anybody can create this kind of item, since assembly is not required. This indeed places us one step closer to a DIY fashion revolution, as sajohnso posted on this project.

Jinhee Lee – Looking Outwards 03

Artist’s Work – Dot San 2016 “SUV”

I was looking through the work of my peers and stumbled upon this interesting looking outwards report. After reading the post and information about the piece, I really agreed with everything that Jinhee said in his original post. There were a lot of subtle things that were included in the artists work, such as the detail scaling that Jinhee had mentioned.

It was also interesting looking at some of the other pieces that Dot San made, in which he actually materializes and shows the printed versions of some of his concepts / digital works. Looking at these you can really see the intricacies and details that went into the work, and also notice that a lot of his work is created for tours and exhibitions which is definitely noticeable in the finesse that his finished products show.

LifeObject Installation

After browsing all the interesting post by my peers, I’m particularly drawn to the LifeObject project introduced by Yugy. This Israeli Pavilion is an architectural installation at  2016 Venice Biennale, that embodies the resilient properties of a bird’s nest. Curators of this project include Dr. Ido Bachelet, Bnaya Bauer, Arielle Blonder, Dr. Yael Eylat Van Essen, and Noy Lazarovich.

Specially, I’m fascinated by the spatial architectural forms generated through the scientific analysis, which materializes the abstract ideas into a architectural senses of thinness and volume.

I agree with my peer’s insight about this project bridging architecture and biology. The computational design of the fabrication process enables the realization of natural quality and randomness of biological characteristics. And the desired animation of the organic nest is successfully manifested through the dynamic yet inorganic material.

Israel Pavilion

I am doing my Looking Outwards post on Hannah K’s post from Week 4. She did a post on Six Drawings, a joint collaborative effort between artist Maotik, percussionist David Espinosa, and musical director David Adamcyk. The project was presented in an audiovisual and instrumental performance at Société des Arts Technologiques in Montreal during the IX Symposium in the spring of 2014. The displays on the rubber orb were controlled through the program TouchDesign while the connected computer ran a Max multimedia software.

I also agree that the work is a completely immersive experience. When the first sounds are visually displayed on the giant orb, the room becomes silent and everyone is enraptured and fascinated by the erie, almost tribal, audiovisuals. One simply cannot peel their eyes away.

While there are many interesting projects students chose to write about in the “Looking Outwards” posts, I was really interested in Sihan’s post about the Selfiecity project. The man behind the project, Dr. Lev Manovich, and his team are interested in examining the style of selfies in five cities – Bangkok, Berlin, Moscow, New York, and Sao Paulo. By poring through thousands of individual photos, the Selfiecity team has been able to uncover patterns on selfie styles, taking into account aspects such as head tilt, smile, age, gender, and more. For instance, it was found that in all cities, women took more selfies than men, and people in Moscow smiled the least.

Like Sihan, I would imagine that the face recognition algorithm behind the selfies would collect quantitative data (i.e. eye position in proportion to the face, head tilt angle, etc.). Although there has been extensive work done on this project, I think it’s difficult to concretely measure certain aspects of a person’s selfie, such as emotion. I also think it would be interesting for the team to create visualizations of people’s selfies by gender, as I would imagine that men and women may also take selfies in different styles.

I chose to look at Cedes’ week 6 post about Jean Tinguely‘s work.  She focused on his Drawing Machines, which are moving sculptures that he created with the intention of producing drawings. These drawings were abstract and a bit rough but maintained a rhythm created by the machine. I agree with Cedes about the point she makes that there is a “juxtaposition of using a machine (witch is often associated with precision) to create these un-precise images”, but for me this is not the most interesting aspect of his work. I enjoy both his works that create drawings and his works that are purely performative/moving sculptures.

I think that the Drawing Machine work is most interesting because it functions on many different levels. There are aspects of performance work and sculpture as well as drawing. The machines themselves are beautiful to look at, as well as the products that some of them create. The performance of the work is the most interesting to me, especially in the video clips where you can see the shadows of the work dancing on the walls.

(You have to actually go to Vimeo to watch the video due to the privacy settings)

3D Rendering in Architecture

Christine Kim’s post [1] on 3D rendering captured my attention when I was looking through the posts for week 5. In her post, Christine discusses how the 3D rendering of an architectural piece often differs from the real experience, which is an increasing problem because it has compromised the trust between clients and architects. “Most of the time, the 3D computer graphic photos focus on artistic values of the render rather than the creating realistic experiential render”, Christine identifies the cause of the disparities, suggesting that clients should be more understanding of the gist the rendering, instead of focusing on the “realistic experience.”

When I was reading the original article mentioned in Christine’s post [2], I noticed a recommended article by the website named “How to render your building to sell it, not just show it.”[3] It is interesting that, although most of the differences can be attributed to limitations of the rendering software and the variability of the reality, architects’ intentions might also play a crucial role. Just for clarification, I am not implying that architects knowingly deceive their clients; instead, architects are often forced to accentuate certain details of their designs to sell their projects to their clients. For example, going for an impactful POV (point of view) or composition instead of one that most accurately depicts the reality.

Going back to Kim’s advice to clients of not focusing on the”realistic experience”, a question arises: do the client actually want the “realistic experience” in a rendering, or rather a heightened representation that deviates from the reality within an acceptable amount?

[1] Christine (Hae Wann) Kim – LookingOutwards post

[2] “Are 3D renderings deceiving architects and clients?” read here

[3] “How to render your building to sell it, not just show it” read here